Very few startups say in their job listings what laptop you'll get. In October 2026 we read 4,085 listings from 1,440 Y Combinator startups on Work at a Startup, and only 5.3% of the companies mention the laptop, a budget for equipment or bringing your own computer.
The newest startups are writing about a different kind of tool instead. Companies from YC's 2025 and 2026 batches mention AI tool budgets, often "unlimited tokens", more often than they mention equipment: 13 companies against 2. This post goes through what YC listings say about equipment, what they list instead, and what that means if you're writing your own.
Do startups give you a laptop?
Only 5.3% of the YC companies we read say anything about equipment in their listings, and when they do name a laptop, it's almost always a MacBook. About 25 companies mention a Mac and 2 mention a ThinkPad or a Linux machine.
The ones that say it tend to be specific:
- "M5 Pro MacBook Pro and whatever else you need"
- "Equipment: Latest MacBook Pro or equivalent provided."
- "Full desk setup on day one (laptop, monitor, keyboard) + a $200 stipend to make it yours." (Confido)
Nobody in the YC listings mentions how often the laptop is replaced or what happens to it when you leave. Our wider study of equipment in job listings found the same across 103,462 listings: at best about 1 in 10 companies says what equipment you get.
What do startup job listings list instead?
Startup job listings mention equity more than anything else, followed by health cover and free meals. Equipment comes in well down the list, about level with relocation help and visa sponsorship.
| What the listing mentions | YC companies |
|---|---|
| Equity or stock options | about 51% |
| Health, dental or medical cover | about 38% |
| Lunch, meals or snacks | about 19% |
| 401(k) | about 16% |
| Gym or wellness | about 11% |
| Unlimited time off | about 9% |
| Equipment (laptop, budget or bring your own) | 5.3% |
| Relocation | about 5% |
| Visa sponsorship | about 5% |
| Learning budget | about 3% |
| AI tool budget | 1.6% |
So a YC listing is more than three times as likely to mention lunch as equipment. Two thirds of these jobs don't offer remote work, and in an office a laptop is probably taken for granted, which may explain part of the gap.
Are AI tool budgets the new startup perk?
AI tool budgets look like the newest startup perk. 23 YC companies offer one in their listings, and they're mostly very new and very small: 13 of the 23 have 10 people or fewer, and 13 are from YC's 2025 and 2026 batches.
A few of them:
- "Unlimited tokens across every AI model. Use whatever you want, as much as you want." (Cardboard, 8 people)
- "Stipends for AI tools like Cursor and Claude Code" (Veritus, 10 people)
- "unlimited token budget. No caps, no rationing" (Avallon AI, 7 people)
- "$350/mo AI Tools stipend" (Roboflow, 100 people)
| YC batch | Companies | Mention an AI tool budget | Mention equipment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 and 2026 | 440 | 3.0% | 0.5% |
| 2023 and 2024 | 395 | 0.5% | 2.3% |
| 2020 to 2022 | 386 | 1.8% | 10.1% |
| Before 2020 | 218 | 0.5% | 11.9% |
These are small numbers, 13 companies with an AI budget against 2 that mention equipment in the newest batches, so it's probably best to read them as a direction rather than exact percentages.
When do startups start mentioning equipment?
Bigger startups are much more likely to mention equipment. Only 1.9% of YC companies with 10 people or fewer say anything about it, against 15.5% at 51 to 200 people, and companies from batches before 2023 mention it more often than the new ones.
Part of it is that most of the smallest startups don't list benefits at all: only 34% of companies with 10 people or fewer have a benefits section in their listings, against 73% at 51 to 200 people.
What should a startup put in its job listing?
A startup job listing can cover equipment in two or three lines: which laptop you get, any budget for your setup or AI tools, and what happens to the laptop when you leave. That covers what a new hire is likely to want to know, and none of the YC listings we read covered all three.
Something like this works:
- Laptop: MacBook Pro, plus a monitor and keyboard.
- AI tools: Claude Code, Cursor or whatever you prefer, on the company.
- When you leave: after a year it's yours to keep.
The laptop refresh cycles guide covers how often to replace it, and the equipment in job listings post has a fuller template and stipend amounts. Once the team grows, the refresh date and what happens when someone leaves both depend on knowing who has which laptop and when it was bought. AssetJay keeps track of that, free for up to 25 assets.
How we did this research
We read every job page in YC's public jobs sitemap on 25 October 2026. 6,483 pages were live, which came to 4,085 unique listings from 1,440 companies, with team size and batch from each company's YC profile. We counted companies rather than listings. 33% of the jobs list remote work as an option.
A script sorted each sentence into categories. We read all 80 companies the script matched for equipment by hand and counted the 76 that were correct, and all 28 AI tool matches, of which 23 were real perks rather than job duties. The other benefits in the table come from simpler word patterns, so they're approximate: spot checks of equity and meals were about 90% and 80% correct. YC listings are mostly engineering roles written by founders, so they say more about startups than about small businesses in general.
